Training Is Biggest Obstacle for Industrial Engineers

Industrial engineers want a continuous flow of training that helps them perform their jobs effectively. According to the 2014 Manufacturing Training Trends Survey released last week by Seminars for Engineers, lack of training is the biggest obstacle to manufacturing quality success.

Twenty-seven percent of the respondents cited lack of training as their biggest challenge. Other obstacles included outmoded equipment (20%), poor quality control (16%), and company morale (14%). Eighty-nine percent of respondents said their company offers opportunities to attend technical or engineering-related seminars and workshops, but 81% said they wished their companies offered more opportunities to attend technical training. The biggest benefit of continual training, according to 34% of respondents, is improved productivity. Other benefits included fewer defects in manufacturing (27%), better morale (20%), and "greater satisfaction with management" (20%).

The survey went to 40,000 industrial engineers in multiple industries, including fastener/bolted joints, thermal management, packaging, plastics and composite materials. Dov Schechter, director of technical seminars at Seminars for Engineers, told us the survey was meant to "define how technical industry professionals are learning about new technologies, discovering new manufacturing processes, and staying up-to-date on industry trends and developments."

Among respondents who said their companies offered seminars and workshops, 54% said they were offered in-person seminars, and 46% were offered online webinars. When asked which format was more valuable, 64% cited said in-person seminars, while 27% said in-person and online seminars were "about the same." Nine percent preferred the online format.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they would or might benefit from on-site technical seminars or workshops conducted by outside subject-matter experts. Only 10% said their organization had the expertise needed to conduct in-house seminars. Engineers with 1-9 years of experience were more likely than others to say they would benefit from technical training.

"As companies continue to increase their training budgets post-recession, we have seen attendance growth across all our seminars" and workshops, Schechter said.

Good points ttemple. There are two types of training as far as engineers are concerned, the one we find in the literature and the one we gather hands-on. You are right, we can find almost everything online these days, and not having the theoretical knowledge of basic concepts is liability of the engineer, but when it comes to practical knowledge, proper training needs to be done by the firm itself. Being an engineer myself i have experienced that every firm has a unique way of doing things and consists of equipment that might be different than other organizations. Even if the engineers have an in-depth knowledge of how things work theoretically, the firms can't trust them with their equipment without proper training of the newbie. So yes training is something mandatory for the firms and can be considered as the biggest obstacle, as it not only costs money but also wastes valuable time. But it's all worth it if you consider the long term benefits a trained engineer could offer you.

Personally, I can understand why training would be critical for industrial engineers. Industrial engineering curriculums in school understandably tend to emphasize subjects like process optimization, systems engineering, ergonomics and queueing theory. Those kinds of subjects can form a foundation for success, but only when combined with good training in practice.

If I felt that I was undertrained, I would take it upon myself to do something about it. In the age of the internet, there is just no excuse to blame someone else for one's self diagnosed lack of training. If there are not adequate online resources, there are books about everything. I have gone to college book stores and purchased textbooks when I wanted to learn, but couldn't put the time in to attend classes. I would get the books and study them myself. Maybe having an instructor would have been better, but I didn't let that stop me when I wanted to learn something.

There are trade magazines, websites like this, youtube, etc., etc., etc. Not to mention public libraries, where educational resources can be used at no cost.

I translate the lack of training as a lack of desire to learn. I spend a lot of my own time learning, because I enjoy it, and it increases my marketable skillset.

This is interesting, Rob. I wonder if you ask employers of engineers if their biggest obstacle to hiring engineers is that many of those applying for jobs lack the training or qualifications for positions?

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